Page 17 of The Feud

My gaze sweeps the barn and I see Sylvie sitting on top of one of the fresh round hay bales stacked in the northwest corner. She didn’t see me come in so I take an unfettered moment to appraise her attitude. I’m happy to see she doesn’t look bored in the slightest and is watching the lesson with interest while her fingers play with a single straw of hay. I walk around the perimeter of the arena so as not to disturb Kat’s lesson and approach my daughter.

When she catches sight of me, the muscles in her face relax to one of boredom but she eyes me warily.

“Enjoying yourself?” I ask.

She lifts one shoulder and focuses her attention back on the lesson.

“Any interest in getting up on one of the horses today?”

Sylvie shakes her head.

I feel desperate. I need to make a connection with her, but I don’t know how. I wonder if time alone is the answer. While the prospect of that is daunting as hell, I offer anyway. “Why don’t you come with me? Going to check out the yearlings. Nothing cuter than baby horses.”

Sylvie lifts her chin, and she couldn’t look primmer. “No, thank you.”

I consider not giving her a choice, much like Kat told her that she was going to the barn with her today. But I know deep in my gut that won’t fly coming from me. I know Sylvie considers me the absolute enemy since I am the one who dared get her mother pregnant and land her in this situation to begin with. Still, my determination has me persisting. “Come on… I’ll take you over there and we won’t stay long. I’ll bring you right back. I promise it will be fun.”

My heart sinks when Sylvie puts on her most pathetic face. “Actually, I have a really bad headache. Do you think you can take me back to the house so I can lie down?”

Well fuck. If there is one thing guaranteed to get her out of doing something, it’s an illness. I can’t gather whether she’s telling the truth. In fact, given the amount of stress on her little shoulders, I don’t doubt she’s got a headache. But she also could just as easily be using that as an excuse to not spend time with me.

In the end, I have no choice but to accept her at face value. I nod and motion for her to climb off the hay bale. “Maybe later I’ll take you over there. Come on, I’ll drive you to the house.”

♦

That night, once my parents have retired to their cottage and I’m alone, I head to the back patio and start a small fire in the firepit. I sit back in a chair, sipping a cold beer and reflecting on the frustrations of the day. Not one of them have to do with running the farm but there are millions where Sylvie is concerned. She stayed in her room the rest of the day and grudgingly came down to join another family dinner where she hardly spoke a word. My frustrations got the best of me and I poked at her, trying to get her to answer questions. It was the wrong tactic, and Sylvie’s own frustrations became apparent when she started answering my questions in French.

Wade and Trey both chuckled, thinking it hilarious, but I wasn’t amused. I asked her to speak English and she only replied in French. I wanted to bang my head on the butcher-block table, which would have been less painful.

“Penny for your thoughts?” I look up to see all three of my siblings emerging from the dark. It’s surprising that they’re all here this late in the evening, seeing as how they have early workdays ahead.

But it also isn’t surprising. They’re here because they know how troubled I am.

Trey wordlessly goes into the house and comes out with three beers and once they’ve all cracked open their bottles and gotten situated around the fire, Wade asks the all-important question. “What do we do with her?”

“Fuck if I know,” I grumble. “But I’m open to suggestions.”

“It will just take time,” Kat says. “I think she enjoyed herself at the barn today. She seemed interested.”

“I bet by this time next week, she’ll be fine,” Trey says, but I have my doubts.

“I’m taking her to register for school tomorrow. Lionel and Rosemund had her at Prescott Academy.” I don’t need to say anything more than that. All us Blackburn kids attended public school and that’s where Sylvie will go. While we certainly have enough money to send her to the school she has been attending, I want her to be around a diverse group of children. I don’t want her around the wealthy elite because the Mardraggons are elitist.

While the Blackburn fortune isn’t quite as big as the Mardraggons’, we’re doing just fine. You’d never know hanging out with any one of us that we’re multimillionaires. And I don’t want Sylvie to act like she has a silver spoon in her mouth. I want her to be a kid and the best way to make that happen is public school.

“Once she makes friends, she’ll start having more fun here.” Kat works at the label on her bottle. “And I’ll keep trying to get her up on a horse.”

“I was thinking about inviting her to go fishing this weekend.” Trey is the sportsman of the family. Fishing and hunting are his biggest passions outside of horses.

“And we know Mom isn’t going to give up on her. I expect Sylvie’s going to be forced to bake cookies before too long.”

I chuckle at that. Tenacity is definitely handed down in our family and it comes with a fiery passion born of our mom’s Irish roots.

Kat leans over and pats me on the shoulder. “It will be fine. I promise.”

I really wish I believed that.

CHAPTER 7

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